The Spirituals in JUBILEE

In October 2024, Seattle Opera presents the world premiere of Jubilee, a new opera telling the story of how the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University popularized African American spirituals in the years following the Civil War. These traditional songs, created, refined, and shared anonymously by enslaved Americans, are the foundation on which all American music has been built. The music is wild and intense; beautiful and painful; full of despair, hope, and uplift. African American opera singers have long championed the spirituals, often concluding concerts and recitals with these beloved songs. Jubilee makes of the spirituals a full evening’s entertainment. 

Seattle Opera · Jubilee

“When I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs towering over the pale city,” wrote W. E. B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. “To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with the blood and dust of toil. Out of them rose for me morning, noon, and night, bursts of wonderful melody, full of the voices of my brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the past.” 

In Jubilee, thirteen opera singers, plus a 48-piece orchestra, perform dozens of beloved spirituals. You’ll hear solo singing and ensemble singing; moments of stunning a cappella intensity and also voices fully supported by orchestra. The orchestra also contribute a lively overture and an entr’acte. Dianne Adams McDowell arranged the vocal parts and Michael Ellis Ingram created the orchestration. The opera is created by Tazewell Thompson, who has been studying and collecting spirituals for years. 

 A complete (alphabetical) list of spirituals in Jubilee:
Balm in Gilead
Deep River
Dere’s No Hidin’ Place Down Here
Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel
Do, Lord, Remember Me
Ezekiel Saw the Wheel
Go Down, Moses
Gonna Ride Up in the Chariot
Good News, Chariot's A-Comin’
Grace
Great Day
I Am a Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow
I Believe I’ll Go Back Home
I Got a Robe
Jubilee
Let Us Break Bread Together
Lord, How Come Me Here?
Lord, I Got a Right to the Tree of Life
Lordy, Won’t You Help Me? 
My God Is So High
Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen
Oh, What A Beautiful City
On Ma Journey Now
Over My Head I Hear Music in the Air
Plenty Good Room
Set Down, Servant
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
Standin’ In the Need Of Prayer
Steal Away
Sun Don’t Set in the Mornin’
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
There’s a Meetin’ Here Tonight
Trampin’
Wade in the Water
We Are Almost Home 

Plus, an extra bonus: when the Jubilees' strongest soprano, Maggie Porter, threatens to leave the group and set off on her own, she’ll sing a passage from La forza del destino, an opera Verdi wrote for Russia while the Civil War was raging in the United States. 

Seattle Opera · “Pace, pace, mio Dio” sung by Mary Elizabeth Williams

Join us at Seattle Opera in October for Jubilee!

Jubilee runs October 12–26, 2024 at McCaw Hall.
Tickets and info at seattleopera.org/jubilee.